ALMOST as Blynn surveyed the empty mill he knew he had made a mistake in coming at all, and was instantly eager to get out unobserved. He knew what a child would think of this sort of spying and how it would take weeks of building up to get back the lost confidence. Particularly was it important just now to maintain the genuine intimacy which had miraculously grown up between them in so short a time. As he stumbled up the rocky Valley road he was apprehensive of seeing and being seen.
Perhaps Bardek and she had been watching from near-by bushes. That thought chilled him. Mixed with the fear of losing the child’s faith in him as trusty pal was the quick antagonism against that other pal, who was no doubt with her now in this wild spot.
It was a case for slow treatment. Hurry would spoil all. To come near the rendezvous at all was a grave mistake, he told himself; he had obeyed an impulse, purely a personal one, too, and it was an impulse which his mind should have resolutely checked. It shamed him a little to think how amateurishly he had acted, after all his knowledge of the mind of children.
Gorgas must take him to Bardek in her own good time. One must play a waiting game and trust mightily that all would be well.
He regained the carriage, exhibited a glove and took up the dropped conversation.
“I don’t agree with you about the Duke,” he continued. Miss Levering had seen “Twelfth Night” recently and had read it over to prepare herself for a conversation with a university instructor. “The Duke behaves quite properly, if you will agree with my theory.”
“He was a goose,” commented the lady, “groaning over his countess and not having the gumption to go up to her and talk it out. And in the last act he whisks over to Viola just because she puts on dresses. Shakespeare nodded when he made the Duke; that’s my theory.”
“Let me tell you mine,” said Blynn. “To the Elizabethan, love was an infection, a kind of pestilence, like the plague, which one caught from another. Once you have it you are ill. You become moody, put on gay clothes, wash your face, and demand sad songs. They sold medicines, love philters to give the disease, and hate potions to cure it. A chap usually knew when he had caught the pesky thing, but he was not always sure of the source. Well, the Duke had a bad case. He got it from the boy Cesario, who was really, as you know, a charming young lady disguised. Now the very salt of the play is the Duke’s blunders in guessing who played the trick on him. The Elizabethan audience understood that joke and enjoyed every one of his false moves toward the conquest of the Countess. It’s as if a fellow had the influenza and began to treat himself as if he had sunburn. Every application of cold cream and every sneeze would be comedy to the onlooker. So in the end, when the Duke discovers the cause of his trouble he promptly marries it; as most of us do. Oh, he isn’t a bit inconsistent, if you understand Elizabethan love.”
“Well, that only proves the play is founded on an error,” she persisted. “If you must have a lot of historic learning to appreciate a play, it is not great drama. I insist, Shakespeare nodded.”
“What makes you so certain that love is not a plague?”